With the pendulum in his hands, Tachibana let it hang freely as he closed his eyes and slipped into cogitation before asking a simple question.
"The person who Sasuke slipped my explosion tag on went in this direction."
Tachibana repeated the sentence seven times before opening his eyes and seeing that his pendulum was spinning clockwise.
Everyone on Team Seven mentally *sighed* when they saw that the divination seemed to be working since they'd already waited a few more days after setting up a shop in the Black Market with Yamato's help.
Tachibana was the main attraction of their stall since while Sakura and Naruto handled the customers at the front desk, Tachibana performed a simple divination behind the counter and told them the results of their questions.
Although only a few days had passed a lot of people had arrived at the stall to learn about the information they were giving out because of two reasons.
The first was that Yamato had used a few of his contacts in the Black Market to increase and hype up the popularity of the store.
But the second and more important reason was that rarely anyone returned empty-handed from their store. Since Tachibana depended on supernatural means to gain information, he could mostly answer all questions he was given and he always got the right answers.
Tachibana was single-handedly holding up the entire store's popularity.
At the end of each trade, Sakura would whisper warnings to their clients about people with the cursed tongue eradication seal interfering with others' jobs in the area so that they could attract the attention of ROOT shinobi.
Even then it was only at the end of their fifth day at the new stall that members from the ROOT had showed up to check out on them selling information about the cursed tongue eradication seal.
Yamato was the one who recognised them since he could tell at a glance that their emotions had been suppressed and that they had been turned into puppets or dolls.
But Tachibana had stolen his thunder by simply divining about them as he did with the other members who visited their stall.
And when he saw his pendulum spinning clockwise he signalled for Sasuke to act and stuff a small explosive seal into the shinobi's ninja pouch after bumping into him on purpose.
And so, currently, Team Seven was outside Tanzaku Quarters with Tsunade and Shizune following closely behind them all.
Tachibana had already noticed them, but he didn't want them to catch on so he ignored them for the most part.
So, Team Seven, Tsunade and Shizune spent the next three days following Tachibana's directions towards the village. But as they got closer and closer to the village everyone realised that they were moving to the mountain range near it and not the village itself.
Team Seven was confused for a while about why they were going there instead of the village and Naruto even had the guts to try and fool himself into thinking that perhaps the people they were searching for weren't shinobi from the village after all.
But it didn't take much for that assumption to be torn down and trashed for him since as soon as they camped on one of the mountains while keeping guard they noticed several Konoha shinobi patroling the area.
Naruto was immediately angry since he wanted to storm into the 'cave' that was being used as a hideout by those shinobi but, Yamato held him back.
'*sigh* Hokage-sama was right. Naruto is still too naive.'
But then Yamato looked at Tachibana.
'But…Tachibana-kun…it makes me really wonder if his abilities are only a way for his subconscious to figure things out faster than he can consciously…'
'Is it really not a divination?'
'How did he ever figure out, even subconsciously, where the entrance to the ROOT base was?'
"Can I go now?" Naruto asked Tachibana again since Tachibana was tied to him by Yamato with the help of a wooden cuff.
Tachibana shook his head. There was a frown on his face, but it wasn't there because he was stuck with Naruto even though it appeared like that.
No, it was there for a different reason-
'Why hasn't Mito acted yet?'
'Everything should've been finished on her end already…'
'Or did she do it and the ROOT is still this calm?'
'I don't think Danzo would be this calm if what I planned actually happened.'
A day earlier.
An apparition appeared on the roof of the orphanage that was being watched by a dozen shinobi at this point. Each shinobi was a well-trained member of the ANBU and they all stared at the little girl that appeared on it like hawks.
Some performed hand seals, while others pulled out their shuriken and kunai, ready to launch it at lightning speed once the order to fire was given.
Due to the heat in the past few days, dark clouds had formed overhead in the sky and a light drizzle began to fall while the girl simply looked at all of them.
And then all of a sudden under a sudden bright flash of lightning accompanied by a loud rumbling thunder the girl vanished from her spot.
The shinobi all looked around, but they couldn't find her, except at this moment something strange started to happen all around Konoha.
A random passerby on the street looked up at the sky as the light drizzle slowly became harsher.
At first, only the sound of the rain hitting the various awnings over various stalls and stores changed with the intensity remaining much the same since only the drops had gotten larger.
But soon enough the drops started dropping down with speed enough that it started to hurt a little when standing in the rain.
The normal people all around the village all quickly took shelter under various roofs near them while the shinobi looked around wondering why there was such a sudden heavy rain in the summer.
Worse still was Hiruzen who was looking at all the frozen people in the village from his window with shock and horror.
'A village-wide genjutsu?'
'How!?'
'Who!?'
Hiruzen almost dropped his smoking pipe as he quickly clicked a button on the underside of his table to summon the ANBU.
However, no one arrived, leaving Hiruzen even more shocked.
Quickly dropping his Hokage regalia to transform into his battle gear rushing out into the village whose people had been trapped in a genjutsu all around him.
Hiruzen first rushed toward the ANBU headquarters. He entered it and checked to see if anyone was around before giving up since when he reached the main office he found Shikaku Nara, the current head of the ANBU's strategic affairs, frozen in his chair with his eyes open.
"Shikaku if you're asleep, this is not the time to play games with me!" Hiruzne said in a frantic attempt to wake up his military strategist but Shikaku didn't move a single muscle.
Hiruzen quickly poured his chakra into Shikaku's body to wake him up from the genjutsu but as soon as he attempted to do so he found himself at an impasse.
'Why can't I sense any foreign chakra interfering with his chakra system?'
Inside the genjutsu, each person trapped in it was currently holding a piece of paper that described in detail the research and experiments conducted behind closed doors by the Hokage and his gang of loonies in the village.
"This…" a stray civilian in the village caught up in the genjutsu asked with a soft cry as he looked at the picture of a little boy in the pamphlet.
"This can't be true…my boy…he was captured by Hokage-sama to experiment with his death and soul?" The man collapsed onto the floor as his knees buckled under the immense mental pressure causing him to lose control.
Mito looked at everything that was happening with a soft frown.
'Tsk. That monkey is already trying to wake someone up. I don't think I can hold him back for long.'
'I hope that brat returns soon or I'll have to do something drastic.'
The rain that was pouring with the force of a million sharp needles falling from the sky suddenly started to fall with even more force as they started destroying the roofs and impaling the civilians and shinobi below.